This book conducts systematic theoretical research on the social mechanism running system based on China's targeted poverty alleviation model and poverty reduction experience. In light of the theories of Parsons' structural functionalism, Luhmann's social system theory, and Merton's structural functionalism, this book puts forward the "coupling" theory of China's targeted poverty alleviation strategy. From the theoretical level, the operation process of poverty reduction policy is a complex social system. The "coupling" theory of China's targeted poverty alleviation strategy is mainly a theoretical innovation for the general expression of China's targeted poverty alleviation model. In terms of the design and running process of the targeted poverty alleviation strategy, the multilevelness of antipoverty and the heterogeneity of poverty objects reflect the complexity of poverty reduction, which displays systematic complexity in the structural evolution and functional differentiation of poverty reduction, as well as the evolution of the subjective intention of poverty objects. Therefore, this book conducts a "systematic" analysis of the implementation conditions and operation process of targeted poverty alleviation from the perspective of "coupling," presenting a social practice mechanism in which multiple systems coordinate and interact with each other, the poverty reduction system is continuously optimized, and policy effectiveness is continuously improved in China's poverty reduction practice.

An ideal resource for students as well as general readers, this book comprehensively examines the Great Society era and identifies the effects of its legacy to the present day. With the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson inherited from the Kennedy administration many of the pieces of what became the War on Poverty. In stark contrast to today, Johnson was aided by a U.S. Congress that was among the most productive in the history of the United States. Despite the accomplishments of the Great Society programs, they failed to accomplish their ultimate goal of eradicating poverty. Consequently, some 50 years after the Great Society and the War on Poverty, many of the issues that Johnson's administration and Congress dealt with then are in front of legislators today, such as an increase in the minimum wage and the growing divide between the wealthy and the poor. This reference book provides a historical perspective on the issues of today by looking to the Great Society period; identifies how the War on Poverty continues to impact the United States, both positively and negatively; and examines how the Nixon and Reagan administrations served to dismantle Johnson's achievements. This single-volume work also presents primary documents that enable readers to examine key historical sources directly. Included among these documents are The Council of Economic Advisers Economic Report of 1964; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; John F. Kennedy's Remarks Upon Signing the Economic Opportunity Act; The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (a.k.a. the Moynihan Report); and the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (a.k.a. the Kerner Report). Documents the evolution of key issues addressed in the Great Society-such as civil rights, immigration, and the chasm between rich and poor-that are still challenging us today Shows how young people were able to influence massive political and social change-in a time without the benefit of instant communication and social media Includes dozens of primary documents, including Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 State of the Union Address; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Lyndon B. Johnson's "Stepping Up the War on Poverty" address; "Where Do We Go From Here?," delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. at the SCLC Convention Atlanta, GA; and remarks given by President Obama at the Civil Rights Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library in April 2014 Includes content related to the themes of the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies and the Common Core requirements for primary documents and critical thinking exercises

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Detailed analyses of poverty and wellbeing in developing countries, based on household surveys, have been ongoing for more than three decades. The large majority of developing countries now regularly conduct a variety of household surveys, and the information base in developing countries with respect to poverty and wellbeing has improved dramatically. Nevertheless, appropriate measurement of poverty remains complex and controversial. This is particularly true in developing countries where (i) the stakes with respect to poverty reduction are high; (ii) the determinants of living standards are often volatile; and (iii) related information bases, while much improved, are often characterized by significant non-sample error. It also remains, to a surprisingly high degree, an activity undertaken by technical assistance personnel and consultants based in developed countries. This book seeks to enhance the transparency, replicability, and comparability of existing practice. In so doing, it also aims to significantly lower the barriers to entry to the conduct of rigorous poverty measurement and increase the participation of analysts from developing countries in their own poverty assessments. The book focuses on two domains: the measurement of absolute consumption poverty and a first order dominance approach to multidimensional welfare analysis. In each domain, it provides a series of flexible computer codes designed to facilitate analysis by allowing the analyst to start from a flexible and known base. The book volume covers the theoretical grounding for the code streams provided, a chapter on 'estimation in practice', a series of 11 case studies where the code streams are operationalized, as well as a synthesis, an extension to inequality, and a look forward.

This book documents and explains the remarkable decline in the American marriage rate that began about 1970. This decline has occurred in spite of the fact that married people are better off than unmarried people in many ways. Many other attempts to explain the "retreat from marriage" blame it on culture change involving a devaluation of marriage, and/or on ignorance of the benefits of marriage among the unmarried population. In turn, because unmarried adults and single-parent families are poorer than others, poverty and its associated problems are attributed to the failure to marry. The argument presented here is that the declining marriage rate is due to the deteriorating position of workers, particularly men, in the American economy. Not only have jobs disappeared and wages decreased, especially for the less-educated, but existing jobs have become more precarious. Less-educated workers can't count on having jobs in the future, and can't count on earning enough to support families if they have jobs because their wages have stagnated. In this economic environment, the flexibility to change partners becomes a survival strategy for the economically marginalized population, which has been increasing in size for the past four decades. Arrangements such as cohabitation allow for this flexibility; marriage does not. This argument implies that marriage is not a realistic choice for many Americans. In fact, it is a choice that many people don't actually have. Marriages between economically marginal men and women would not eventuate in the benefits that middle-class people experience when they marry, and would eliminate an option they may need to survive in the face of unrelenting poverty. We won't convince these people that marriage would improve their lives, because in most cases it wouldn't be true. To return the marriage rate to its pre-1970 level, we need to address the economic factors that have caused the decline.

When Michael Copperman left Stanford University for the Mississippi Delta in 2002, he imagined he would lift underprivileged children from the narrow horizons of rural poverty. Well-meaning but naive, the Asian American from the West Coast soon lost his bearings in a world divided between black and white. He had no idea how to manage a classroom or help children navigate the considerable challenges they faced. In trying to help students, he often found he couldn't afford to give what they required - sometimes, with heartbreaking consequences. His desperate efforts to save child after child were misguided but sincere. He offered children the best invitations to success he could manage. But he still felt like an outsider who was failing the children and himself. Teach For America has for a decade been the nation's largest employer of recent college graduates but has come under increasing criticism in recent years even as it has grown exponentially. This memoir considers the distance between the idealism of the organization's creed that ""One day, all children will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education"" and what it actually means to teach in America's poorest and most troubled public schools. Copperman's memoir vividly captures his disorientation in the divided world of the Delta, even as the author marvels at the wit and resilience of the children in his classroom. To them, he is at once an authority figure and a stranger minority than even they are - a lone Asian, an outsider among outsiders. His journey is of great relevance to teachers, administrators, and parents longing for quality education in America. His frank story shows that the solutions for impoverished schools are far from simple.

In Crisis, Inequalities and Poverty, Schettino and Clementi provide an empirical and theoretical analysis of the economic breakdown that has characterised the last two decades of capitalist development - from the Lehman collapse to the Covid-19 pandemic - with a particular focus on the impact on poverty and inequality. The book provides a materialist account of the current global crisis of overproduction and looks at the link between capitalist crisis and systemic inequity, making the case through detailed quantification that the principal engine of these structural phenomena is in fact the general law of accumulation of the capitalist mode of production.

Globally, poverty affects millions of people's lives each day. Children are hungry, many lack the means to receive an education, and many are needlessly ill. It is a common scene to see an impoverished town surrounded by trash and polluted air. There is a need to debunk the myths surrounding the impoverished and for strategies to be crafted to aid their situations. Sociological Perspectives on Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction in Rural Populations is an authored book that seeks to clarify the understanding of poverty reduction in a substantive way and demonstrate the ways that poverty is multifaceted and why studying poverty reduction matters. The 12 chapters in this volume contribute to existing and new areas of knowledge production in the field of development studies, poverty knowledge production, and gender issues in the contemporary African experience. The book utilizes unique examples drawn purposely from select African countries to define, highlight, raise awareness, and clarify the complexity of rural poverty. Covering topics such as indigenous knowledge, sustainable development, and child poverty, this book provides an indispensable resource for sociology students and professors, policymakers, social development officers, advocates for the impoverished, government officials, researchers, and academicians.

This book examines the underlying assumptions and implications of how we conceptualise and investigate poverty. The empirical entry point for such inquiry is a series of research initiatives that have used mixed method, combined qualitative and quantitative, or Q-Squared ( Q(2)) approaches, to poverty analysis. The Q(2) literature highlights the vast range of analytical tools within the social sciences that may be used to understand and explain social phenomena, along with interesting research results. This literature serves as a lens to probe issues about knowledge claims made in poverty debates concerning who are the poor (identification analysis) and why they are poor (causal analysis). Implicitly or explicitly, questions are raised about the reasons for emphasising different dimensions of poverty and favouring different units of knowledge, the basis for distinguishing valid and invalid claims, the meaning of causation, and the nature of causal inference, and so forth. Q(2) provides an entry point to address foundational issues about assumptions underlying approaches to poverty, and applied issues about the strengths and limitations of different research methods and the ways they may be fruitfully combined. Together, the strands of this inquiry make a case for methodological pluralism on the grounds that knowledge is partial, empirical adjudication imperfect, social phenomena complex, and mixed methods add value for understanding and explanation. Ultimately, the goals of understanding and explanation are best served if research questions dictate the choice of methodological approach rather than the other way around.

The failure of attempts to tackle global poverty have bred cynicism and 'compassion fatigue'. Eradicating Extreme Poverty provides an urgently needed fresh approach which will re-energise action on this issue. Rejecting traditional 'top-down' approaches, Xavier Godinot and his colleagues start from the experiences, capabilities and strategies of the poor themselves. They argue that the first step is a close connection with poor communities followed by a commitment to take action alongside them. Life-stories from Burkina Faso, France, Peru and the Philippines are used to show that the poor must be involved in their own liberation. After decades of failed development policies, this book outlines a radical new approach which will enliven debate amongst policy-makers, researchers, students and academics.

Today's globalised world means offshore finance, airport boutiques and high-speed Internet for some people, against dollar-a-day wages, used t-shirts, and illiteracy for others. How do these highly skewed global distributions happen, and what can be done to counter them? New Rules for Global Justice engages with widespread public disquiet around global inequality. It explores (mal)distributions in relation to country, class, gender and race, with international examples drawn from Australia to Zimbabwe. The book is action-oriented and empowering, presenting concrete proposals for 'new rules' in regard to climate change, corruption, finance, food, investment, the Internet, migration and more.

Homelessness in America's cities remains a growing problem. The homeless today face the same challenges as in years past: poverty, tenuous or no ties to family and friends, physical and mental health issues, and substance abuse. Compared to the 1950s to 1970s, more homeless are now sleeping on city streets versus in shelters or single room hotels. Homelessness rates are affected by economic trends, lack of equitable and inclusive healthcare and housing, decline in public assistance programs, and natural and man-made disasters. This collection of essays covers case studies, innovations, practices and policies of municipalities coping with homelessness in the 21st century.

We live in an increasingly prosperous world, yet the estimated number of undernourished people has risen, and will continue to rise with the doubling of food prices. A large majority of those affected are living in India. Why have strategies to combat hunger, especially in India, failed so badly? How did a nation that prides itself on booming economic growth come to have half of its preschool population undernourished?
Using the case study of a World Bank nutrition project in India, this book takes on these questions and probes the issues surrounding development assistance, strategies to eliminate undernutrition, and how hunger should be fundamentally understood and addressed.
Throughout the book, the underlying tension between choice and circumstance is explored. How much are individuals able to determine their life choices? How much should policy-makers take underlying social forces into account when designing policy? This book examines the possibilities, and obstacles, to eliminating child hunger.
This book is not just about nutrition. It is an attempt to uncover the workings of power through a close look at the structures, discourses, and agencies through which nutrition policy operates. In this process, the source of nutrition policy in the World Bank is traced to those affected by the policies in India.

Nuanced interconnections of poverty and educational attainment around the UK are surveyed in this unique analysis. Across the four jurisdictions of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, experts consider the impact of curriculum reforms and devolved policy making on the lives of children and young people in poverty. They investigate differences in educational ideologies and structures, and question whether they help or hinder schools seeking to support disadvantaged and marginalised groups. For academics and students engaged in education and social justice, this is a vital exploration of poverty's profound effects on inequalities in educational attainment and the opportunities to improve school responses.